Adult-FanFiction.org : Gundam, Beyblade, DBZ, FMA

A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 2207 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing AC or the characters from it. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
- 20
- 21
- 22
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 5

Part 1
October 11, 2007
(shaky handwriting)
I need to write. I wasn't going to. I don't want (scratched out) anyone to read this. But I need to. I need to do something or I'll go insane. I think I'll go insane anyway. Every time I think of it, of what he did, I just want to vomit.
(large amount of text scribbled over)
(steadier handwriting)
Ok... ok... I think I have a better grip now. I think I can do this. I don't know where to start. I guess far away from this, right? That's what Mrs. Khushrenada told me when I had to write about Quatre. 'Start from the beginning, not the end. By the time you get to the end, you'll have a better handle on it.' Ha! That bullshit didn't help me when I was writing about Quatre. There's no way I'm going to get a better handle on this.

Deep breaths, that's what I need. And some water. At least my hands aren't shaking anymore. Alright, the beginning. What is the beginning of this mess?

I guess I should start from the day after I picked up my kitten out of our garbage can. I named her Pepper, by the way. She looked like a Pepper. Quatre would approve.

I had thought that the novelty of having a pet would wear off after a day or two and the frustration of taking care of her and hiding her would overwhelm me, but when I woke up Monday morning to Pepper batting at my bangs instead of sleeping in her shoebox like she was supposed to, I found the thought of getting out of bed to be less miserable than it usually was. She had done pretty well when I had been at work Sunday. She hadn't clawed up my room and, best of all, my dad hadn't found her, which gave me hope that I could pull this off. The worst she had done was somehow scatter my scraps of cloth all over the room and go to the bathroom in the corner which, given I hadn't provided her with an alternative yet, wasn't really her fault. I was going to have to figure out a bathroom solution for her and soon.

That 'soon' quickly became 'immediately' when I scouted my room that morning to find that, at some point in the night, she had peed in a few other places as well. I knew enough about cats to know that she wasn't so much looking for a place to piss as marking things, which I guess is expected in a new place. I didn't mind her peeing on the floor, desk, and chair, it wasn't too awful cleaning it, but I got worried when I smelled some in her shoebox. I had no clue how to get her to stop or if it was a bad sign. I knew almost nothing about keeping a pet.

'Wonder if the library has a book on training kittens,' I thought and mentally added 'cat literature' to my ever (depressingly) growing list of pet expenses.

It wasn't just the marking, I wanted to train her to go into her hidey hole if there was someone else in the room besides me. That would probably be impossible, even with a dog, but even getting her to sleep in her shoebox more often would make me feel better. Even though, I have to admit, I was starting to like her curled up on my pillow. I slept better Sunday than I had in a long time. When she was with me, I didn't think about Trowa.

I knew that I couldn't put off buying her things for much longer, but I also had no clue how I was going to afford just her food and litter. What about shots? Neutering? What if she was sick from being outside? The more I thought about it, the more I thought about finding her a better home. But when I looked into those big eyes, I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand to lose another thing that I cared for, it would kill me.

Watching Pepper roll around on my mattress, wrestling with one of my socks, I realized that if I really wanted to keep her and take care of her, I only had two real options, and neither of them were pleasant. I had gotten paid Friday and my check was still in my backpack, waiting to be cashed and given to my father. I could cash it and use it on Pepper, but even then I didn't think I could afford to get her seen by a vet. But I could afford her food and the other things that she needed. Of course, I would be too busy in the hospital to take care of her, so I easily nixed that plan. The second option was only slightly less unpleasant, but it was the only chance that I had.

I went to see Mrs. Liddle. Mrs. Liddle is... well, calling her a crazy cat lady is kind of mean. She isn't nuts, she just really loves animals, especially cats, and has a lot of them. She's just a bit... eccentric. According to Pat, that's what happens to women that don't use their pussy enough. It goes to disuse and it affects their brains. But of course, you can take that with a grain of salt since Pat's brain has gone to disuse, if he had ever had one to begin with.

Despite what my father and Pat and a lot of other people say about Mrs. Liddle, she isn't a bad person. People around town seem to equate having too many cats and being too old to do any repairs on her house as being nuts and a slob, but I've seen worse houses and I think collecting cats is a bit more sane than our other neighbor and his three pit bulls and two rottweilers, each with a worse, more rotten personality than the next. In my opinion, anyone that runs an animal shelter and adoption agency, without even getting paid for it, can't be a bad person.

That's not to say that I've ever sat down and had a chat with a woman before. I tried to steer clear of her, if only because she has a bit of a problem with my family. To be fair, it's deserved. Or at least her outright hatred of my father is. Her feelings for me and my mother run more to disdain because of our connection to my dad. He had never gotten along with her in the entire time we had lived on that street. He always had a complaint, from the smell of her trash, the amount of cats in her front yard, to her parking her car on the street a few times because one of her 'babies' had decided to lay out in her driveway. People aren't really allowed to park on the street, but it wasn't like her car had been blocking traffic or anything. I think he just hates her and likes to cause trouble for her.

Things came to a head between them a couple years ago when my father had called animal services on her and gotten them to take a bunch of her cats away. Since then, her contempt of him had turned into a full blown, enraged hatred so severe that I was surprised she hadn't assaulted him. I hadn't really understood how someone could react like that to a few cats, but since Pepper had come into my life, I got it suddenly. If someone took my kitten away, I would be devastated, and I wasn't the one who looked to my pets like they were my children.

All of my common sense told me that I was going to get no help from that woman. If she opened her door to me at all, it was only for the pleasure of slamming it in my face. But while she hated me, she also loved cats and might have some things she could throw my way, cheaper than a pet store. I worried that she might tell my father about my cat out of spite if I told her why I wanted her help, but I didn't think that she would. She couldn't even stand the sight of him. The worst she could do, I assured myself, was not talk to me at all.

It was still desperation, and nothing else, that had me walking past the broken gate in front of her house that Monday morning before school and knocking on the door after trying to ring the bell proved that that was broken, too. A woman in her late sixties with greying, curly, brown hair and hazel eyes opened the door just a crack, glaring at me suspiciously.

"What do you want?" she demanded in a curt, unfriendly tone.

"Uh... hi, Mrs. Liddle," I greeted with a stammer, "How are you this morning?"

"Just spit it out, Maxwell," she snapped at me coldly, "not all of us have all day to stand around and make small talk."

She looked like she was just going to slam her door in my face, like I feared that she would, when a sleek, white cat with a grey, diamond shaped mark on its forehead squeezed past Mrs. Liddle to try to rub up against my leg. I almost crouched down to pet it, but my common sense kicked in. I didn't think that the surly woman would appreciate me trying to touch one of her babies. My neighbor hastily picked up the feline like she thought that I was going to try to hurt it, and she probably did. The cat was unperturbed by her owner, just staring at me with huge, green-yellow eyes full of curiosity. I don't think that they had many visitors.

"If you're father sent you over here to make trouble for me again-" she started to threaten me, looking nervous and holding her cat to her chest like some kind of security blanket.

"No, nothing like that!" I assured her, deciding to cut out all the pleasantries and just cut to the chase, "The truth is that I'm kind of in a situation and you're the only person who can help me. See, I kind of... uh... 'acquired' a kitten yesterday."

I rubbed at the back of my head sheepishly, expecting her to tell me that I was full of shit, but she dropped her defensive posture as I rambled.

"She was a stray," I explained, "and I would really like to keep her, but I don't make a lot of money and my dad uses what little I do, so I have no clue how I'm going to take care of her. I really don't want to give her to a shelter, and I don't want my father to find out that I have her, so I thought maybe... maybe if you had a few things, like an extra litterbox and kitten food that you aren't using, I can do some chores for you as trade? I don't have a lot of money to pay you for them, but I can fix things or mow your lawn or whatever you need. I just really need for my father not to find out about it, not even that I was here."

I cringed at my own neediness, realizing how stupid I was, begging someone who loathed me for help. The woman hated my father, and she feared him, why the hell would she help me hide things from him and give me stuff out of the goodness of her heart? She studied me for a moment, no doubt trying to decide if I was feeding her shit, although who knew why she thought I would make up such a story. She seemed to decide that I was at least being truthful with her, because all of her coldness and distrust in me melted away and she even gave me a soft smile.

"No, we can't have that... your father finding out that you're keeping a cat in his house," she sneered at the mere mention of the man that had taken some of her cats away from her and pet the one that was in her arms, "Who knows what that lout would do," she thought for a second, "I do have some dry, kitten food that I need taken off of my hands. I was fostering a kitten for the shelter, but he passed away."

"I'm so sorry," I said earnestly and just barely caught a flash of pleasant surprise in her gaze.

"Thank you," she murmured, "He was sick from the moment he came to us at the shelter. But all of my babies are grown, so I have no use for the food anymore."

That soft, almost sentimental look of hers turned shrewd.

"How capable are you at unclogging a sink?" she asked, "The sink in my kitchen won't drain every time I do the dishes and that damned drain snake I purchased won't do shit for it. Both hinges on my fence are rusted useless and it needs a new coat of paint. My yard could use a touch up as well," she looked out on her overgrown and weed-filled front yard, which wasn't all that big, which only made the problems with it look worse, "I had a young man from the shelter come out and do some weeding for me last year, but I can't afford that anymore. Between my work, taking care of my babies, the cost, and my arthritis, I can't take care of any of it myself."

"I can do all of that," I said eagerly, not able to put a lid on my sudden hope, "Our sink has the same problem, I think all these old houses were built the same. My dad showed me how to fix the problem a few years ago, and I certainly don't mind weeding and fixing your fence, too."

"Alright, Duo," her hazel eyes lit up and I realized that she was just as desperate for help as I was. You didn't end up on our side of town if you had the money to hire people to take care of your home, and Mrs. Liddle didn't have any family that I knew of to help her, either, "I'll tell you what. If you promise to have my gate fixed by the end of this week, I'll give you what I bought for Oliver, and if you swing by with your kitten some time this week, I'll take her in to get checked out by our vet as well."

My eyes widened in surprise. I had been expecting to barter for some cat food, I hadn't expected to win medical treatment as well.

"Are you sure?" I asked. I wasn't used to being lucky in anything, I couldn't afford not to look a gift horse in the mouth, "I... I can't afford to get her neutered or medication if there's something wrong with her..."

"Of course you can't," she tisked at me, "but a child needs proper care and I get free veterinary visits from my work at the shelter. If there's anything wrong with her, I expect you to do extra chores to pay for it. But I won't have you neglecting the poor dear because you don't know what you're doing."

"Absolutely not," I vowed, "If I get over my head, I'll find her a good home. I won't be irresponsible."

She nodded her approval and opened her door wider.

"Well, come inside. I have Oliver's things in the kitchen," she walked into her house and I followed her, but not before glancing down the block at my own house, making sure that there was no one watching us.

Mrs. Liddle's house was about the same size as ours, but it had a lot more stuff in it, making it look smaller. Despite the numerous cats I spotted, the home actually looked quite clean, with lots of shelves and furniture for the cats to lounge on. She, or someone she had paid, had obviously installed the shelves specifically for the cats, because there was nothing else of them. She put the white cat down as she led me into the kitchen and it wasted no time twining around my legs, obviously not having the same problems with me and my family that it's owner had. There was a strong, unmistakable odor of cat around the place, but it wasn't the disgusting, ill kept home that my father claimed that it was. Even if Mrs. Liddle was a cat hoarder, it was obvious that she cared about her babies a lot.

"Here," she said when we got to the kitchen and she pointed to a large, black trash bag.

I opened it and stared in shock at the bounty that she was given me. There was a large bag of barely used kitten food, a food dish, a litter box with a half empty bag of litter, a few toys, a jar of catnip, and a few other things that I had no clue their purpose, but I aimed to find out.

"This... this is too much," I insisted.

I had this sense of foreboding and I felt intensely nervous. You didn't get anything for nothing. Sure, I had offered to help her out around the house, but that seemed like nothing compared to her offering to do all this for me, for someone that she didn't even like. She could just give me a bag of food whenever I need it and I would have done the same amount of work, so why bother? I almost wanted to ask her what the catch was, even if I had no reason to actually suspect her of anything.

She snorted at my concerns.

"I can't do anything with it," she pointed out, which was completely logical. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that I should on alert, waiting for something bad to happen.

"But why?" I asked, glancing down at the white cat that was still trying to mold herself to my legs while two more cats, a tiger striped one and a black one that reminded me of Pepper tried to get my attention, one purring at me and the other meowing loudly as if asking who was I and why was I in its domain, "You don't even like me."

I was taken aback by the almost motherly smile she gave me.

"My babies like you," she nodded to the three cats swarming me, "so you can't be a bad person. Besides, I won't make your cat suffer because I can't stand the asshole you call a father."

I understood then that Mrs. Liddle still didn't know what to make of me. She didn't trust me and she wasn't necessarily doing me a favor. She didn't know enough about me beyond that I was my father's son and I needed her help to believe that I really was desperate. But she was willing to do Pepper a favor, and that was good enough for me.

I promised her that I would bring my cat to her the next morning so she could be taken to the vet and that I would see to her fence and the sink before next week before thanking her profusely for her help and sneaking my newly acquired cat stuff back into the house. I spent what little time I had before I needed to leave for school setting it all up. I put litter in the litter box and stuck it in the corner between my desk and the wall where it wouldn't be seen, and where it would be far enough away from Pepper's hole in the wall that it wouldn't bother her.

Her new toys and food went into the hole, although I was sure that the toys were going to end up all over the room. I was just going to have to put them back in there every night and morning. I filled up her food dish, put clean water in the bowl I had been using for it, and placed both on the opposite end of the hole that her bed was in. I watched her nervously as she investigated the dry food, hoping that she would eat it. I mean, she had been eating out of our garbage, so maybe she wasn't going to be finicky, but I couldn't keep giving her lunch meat. To my relief, she took to the dry food quickly and ate it with relish, managing half of the bowl.

When she was done with her breakfast, I picked her up and kissed the top of her head.

"We'll be ok, Pepper," I told her and feeling like I was talking to myself, "Just be careful when I'm gone, ok?"

She meowed at me and I sighed, knowing that I couldn't put off going to school for any longer.

That whole school week, I felt like a nervous parent, going to work and leaving the new baby at home, only worse. I'm pretty sure that new fathers don't have to worry that the other occupants of their house are going to kill their child. But every day that I came home from school or work and found my cat in one piece, it bolstered my confidence that I could make things work. Pepper had taken to her new litter box and food like she had been using them her entire life. Monday after school, I found some books on raising cats at the library. Turns out that cats mark things when they're anxious about new surroundings and sure enough, after a couple of days, my cat stopped doing it to my furniture.

I still couldn't get her to sleep in her shoebox when I was sleeping, but when I wasn't laying down, she would take naps in it, so I guess that was a small victory. I'm getting ahead of myself again, though. Monday after school, I came home fully intending on spending my free time before my first work shift playing with my kitten, only to walk into the kitchen and find my father sitting at the table, nursing what looked like his fourth beer. I was in full yellow alert mode seeing him there, not only when he was supposed to be at work, but already getting drunk at three in the goddamned afternoon. The fixed glare on his face wasn't helping matters.

"You're home early," I remarked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

Not that it made any difference. He glared at me with rage like I had just accused him of playing hooky.

"What the fuck do you know about it, you piece of shit?!" he snarled at me and I instinctively took a step back, putting my hands up in a defensive posture.

"Nothing," I tried to soothe, wondering if I could possibly get up to my room to check on my cat without getting hit, "I didn't mean anything by it, I was just wondering if you got the day off or-"

Pure instinct saved me from getting smashed in the head by the half full beer bottle he whipped at my head. I sensed something hot and intense in the air, his rage turning the atmosphere electric, and I ducked and jumped backwards at the mere twitch of his arm. The bottle broke on the wall, splattering beer all over it and splashing on to me, wetting the front of my shirt with the pungent liquid.

"Who do you think you are, you smug bastard?! Get the hell out of my house!" he thundered at me.

I didn't wait around to try to figure out what his problem was. The second he started to get up from his chair, I bolted out of there. I loved Pepper, and I worried that he might find her in his rage, but it was much more likely that he would take all of that anger out on me at that point. I walked swiftly out of South Nausten, my heart racing with anxiety and adrenaline. I felt paranoid that my father was following me and glanced behind myself often, but he hadn't left the house after me.

I was smart enough to know that that hadn't just been one of his displays of random temper. He had been pissed by something and I was willing to bet that it was the reason why he had been home instead of working. Had his hours been cut? But I could have sworn that he had been getting ready for work that morning when I had left for school. So his captain must have sent him home. Why? Had he fucked up an assignment? More likely, I thought bitterly, he had been caught coming in drunk or with a hangover again. It had happened a few times in the last couple of months and my father always came home angry, acting like it was everyone's fault except for his.

"Fucking idiot," I muttered at myself and I really did feel angry at him.

What the hell was he thinking, risking getting his hours cut just so he could get drunk?! Was drinking really that important to him, that he would risk us losing a serious source of income? I couldn't even buy my cat vet care because he used my money to buy groceries, but there he was, getting drunk in the middle of the day. It frustrated me. Before I could even form a coherent thought about where I was walking, I found myself at the beach and sat down in the stand, laying my arms on my bent knees and dropping my head into them. I was still so high strung from him attacking me.

I felt hopeless, like a rat in a fucking trap. Things at home were never exactly great, but lately... lately there was just chaos. When I had been a kid, my dad had never gone to work drunk. Never. He wouldn't have dared, he had known how much we needed his job to survive. What the hell had changed between then and now? What would we do if they reduced his hours or, worst of all, he lost his job? We were barely scrimping by as it was.

A part of me wanted to run away, just shove what little I owned into a duffle bag and bolt. Run away from the hitting and the screaming and the hurt, away from worrying about the downward spiral both of my parents have me on. But what would I do if I did? I had nowhere to go, no money, I haven't even graduated from high school yet. And now I have Pepper. Every choice I have is a shitty one, so I might as well just stay where I am. It's all the same.

A sudden wet nose pressing against my cheek had me jolting out of my frustrated thoughts, my head shooting up to see a dog standing next to me, looking at me like I was its best friend in the entire world. Scratch that. A really BIG dog. About as big as a small pony, or at least that was my initial impression of the thing, although it's head only came up to my ribs. Still, it was the biggest dog I had seen in my life, even more impressive than my neighbor's rottweilers. When I first looked at it, I thought it was a freaking wolf before I realized that it was some kind of mix of Malamute and Husky. It was white and grey, with piercing yellow eyes, incredibly thick, lush fur, and paws that were bigger than my hands.

My initial reaction was to just be plain terrified. I have nothing against dogs, but the strays on my side of town aren't exactly sociable and I've never been around many of the friendly ones. Then that huge dog, which could have easily bitten my face off in one go, decided to happily lick my cheek instead. I almost dared to try to pet it, just so I could find out if that fur was as soft as my cat's, when I saw who was running up to us.

"Kanuck, no!" Heero Yuy ran across the sand like his life depended on it, sounding horrified.

I wondered who he was horrified at, his dog or me. Probably me. Wouldn't want trash like me to touch his precious dog. I felt like sneering at him when the dog, Kanuck, looked over at him and instead of going to him, looked back at me and wagged his tail. I wanted to point out to him that his dog obviously had no problems with me, but I just wanted to avoid Heero all together, especially when I saw Relena trailing after her boyfriend. Heero huffed in annoyance when his dog refused to budge and grabbed him by the collar, pulling it away from me.

"You really should put a leash on him, Heero, just look at the trash he digs up when he goes off on his own," she jeered at me, before getting a whiff of the alcohol on my shirt and wrinkling her nose in distaste at me, "Ugh! Getting sloshed this early in the day, Maxwell? Careful, no one around here likes a drunk faggot. I wouldn't want you to hit on the wrong the person! Of course, for someone like you, everyone is the wrong person, aren't they? It's really too bad we don't have any groups to help you with your addictions, Fudge Packers Anonymous, perhaps?"

I felt my face go red hot with embarrassment at her insults and wondered at it. Why was I embarrassed at all? I was used to her saying shit like that to me for years now, so why did I suddenly want to find a nice, dark hole to crawl into the second she had accused me of being drunk? Because her stupid boyfriend was watching?

I glanced at him, waiting for him to say some snide, ugly thing to me to. He smirked at Relena's remarks, like he always did, but something else happened that was so quick, so fleeting, I had almost missed it. Relena sure had.

He had hesitated.
*****
It was that one realization, that one image in my head that kept me wide awake Monday night. I wasn't thinking about my new kitten, who was curled up on my pillow again, or that I was going to be handing her off to Mrs. Liddle in the morning. I wasn't even thinking about my father's problems and my anxiety that he was going to fuck us over. I wasn't even thinking about Trowa. No, I was thinking about Yuy. I was thinking about how, for that second after Relena had finished insulting me, he hadn't laughed or snickered or even shot me a cruel, superior look. He had looked... I don't know, not blank exactly. It had happened too fast for me to get a read on him. All I knew was that he had smirked, but it had taken him awhile, like he had suddenly remembered that he was supposed to find what Relena was saying to be amusing.

Did he? For the first time since the day that he had moved here, I found myself thinking about him with something more than outright contempt. Who was this guy? Had he just had an off moment, or was he just playing around with Relena? It wouldn't be the first time she had made a 'friend' who didn't really see eye to eye with her and her bitchiness. It didn't mean anything, just that they were willing to overlook their qualms about her bullying to be around someone as popular as her. Even if Heero didn't like how she treated me and some of the other kids in our school, he obviously liked her enough to overlook it.

And for that matter, why did I care what Yuy did? If he really hated gays, then he was an asshole, and if he didn't care either way but was acting like he hated them so that Relena would like him, well, he was still an asshole. In fact, he was a bigger asshole, if that was the case. The only thing weird was why it mattered to me at all. He could jump in a lake filled with rabid, starved piranhas for all that I fucking cared about him and his cunt of a girlfriend.

I managed to put the whole thing out of my mind enough that I could fall asleep. The morning saw me bundling my kitten up in a blanket and debating how I was going to safely get her from my bedroom to Mrs. Liddle's house with no one seeing me. Downstairs, I could hear both of my parents puttering in the kitchen and I swore under my breath. How the hell was I going to get Pepper past them? I couldn't wait for them to go to work, that would make me late for school.

I hadn't needed to worry, though. It didn't take very long with the two of them in our small kitchen together to start up an argument. I didn't pay any attention to what they were screaming at each other, but listened to where their voices were coming from. I was listening so intently that I flinched when I heard one of them throw a plate. There wasn't any gasp of pain, so I didn't think that it had hit anything but a wall. I heard my mother scream at my father that he was a useless bastard and my father called her a stuck-up cunt before he stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door so hard that the walls of the house shook.

I held my precious bundle close to my chest and went down the steps as quickly and quietly as I could. I peeked around the corner of the hallway into the kitchen and saw with relief that my mother was fixing her morning coffee, her back to me, and muttering angrily under her breath. I snuck out the front door easily, wanting to punch the air with triumph.

Pepper started meowing in alarm when she saw that we were outside, but she wasn't a very loud cat, so I wasn't worried that my parents would hear her. She wormed her way out of the blanket and dug her claws into my shirt, continuing to meow as if she thought I was about to do something horrible to her. Maybe she thought that I was going to abandon her. I wondered if that was what had happened to her previous owner, if they had just let her out onto the street or something.

"Shhh," I tried to soothe her, petting her head, "We're just going to see a friend, ok?"

Pepper wasn't having any of it, looking around in alarm and continuing to meow in a way that was breaking my heart. Mrs. Liddle had a pleased look on her face when she opened the door to my knocking and saw what I was carrying.

"So tiny!" she cooed at Pepper, who looked at her with equal interest.

I kept her in my arms as we walked into my neighbor's house. A few of the cats hissed and looked pissy when they realized that a new cat was around, but most just looked curious. I guess they were used to having new arrivals. She shooed out the cats that were in the kitchen and closed the door on them.

"May I?" she asked, holding her hands out to hold my kitten.

I nodded and started to put Pepper in her hands when the cat meowed pitifully at me and dug her claws back into my shirt, not wanting to be separated.

"Hush," I pet under her chin, "Mrs. Liddle is a very nice lady and she's going to make sure that you're healthy, ok?"

I pried her claws off my shirt and gave her to my neighbor. Mrs. Liddle smiled pleasantly at me and then turned her full attention to my pet.

"Aren't you a pretty girl, and so well mannered," she cooed at Pepper who was looking pretty miserable at being handled, but didn't try to bite her, "What's her name?"

"Pepper," I answered.

"Cute," Mrs. Liddle murmured and gave the kitten a brief examination, "She looks a little bit underfed, but that's to be expected if she was a stray. Her coat is nice and clean. She looks happy with you, which is the most important thing, of course. You're doing a good job caring for her."

I blushed but I felt relieved at her praise. At least I wasn't a complete fuck up. I could take care of one cat.

"How long will you have her?" I asked nervously and wanted to slap myself for it.

I had had Pepper for three days. Three whole days. And already, I was getting attached to her. It was so stupid, she was just a cat, but I'm not so oblivious about the problems in my life to not realize that a large part of my attachment to her was my loneliness. Maybe she wasn't a human and she couldn't talk to me or hold me or smile at me, but she listened and she was there and she liked me. She was all I had and the thought of Mrs. Liddle taking her away from me scared me. I know how pathetic that sounds, but I've never claimed to be anything better, or even entirely sane.

"You can come by tomorrow after school," she told me to my relief, "If she needs to be spayed, I can set up a later appointment for her."

"Thank you," I said profusely, "I don't know how to repay you for taking care of her..."

"Just fix my fence, Duo," she said with an amused smile.

Pepper seemed to sense that I was leaving and started to meow loudly and frantically again.

"I'll be back tomorrow, I promise," I told her and kissed the top of her head, "You be a good girl for Mrs. Liddle and the vet, ok?"

Even though I told myself that I needed to do it, I walked out of that house feeling like I had just abandoned another friend. I wouldn't manage much sleep that night, but the absence of my cat's warmth by my face would only be part of the reason.

When you get bullied for your entire public school career, you tend to learn a few things, things are pretty necessary for your continued survival. Quatre had had two big rules; the first I had taken to heart and the second I had needed some cruel teachers to learn. The second rule was, of course, to never fight back. That was a rule that I wasn't likely to ever forget. But the first has gotten me out of some pretty deadly situations between myself and Zechs. Never, ever, ever go any place where there aren't any witnesses. And by witnesses, I of course mean teachers. Sure, no adults were ever going to do anything about Zechs or Relena, but if a teacher saw that things were getting a bit rough, they usually put a stop to it and the terrible twosome would usually let them. I think they just didn't want anyone to call their parents. Beyond that, they didn't give a shit if an adult caught them messing with me.

I'm usually pretty careful about where I go during school hours. I leave classrooms no more than a minute after my teacher does. I don't linger in the hallways. I spend no more than five minutes at my locker. I never eat my lunch outside, only ever in the locked studio or in the cafeteria. At the end of gym, I always make sure that I'm the only one in the showers, even if that means waiting until Zechs has already had his. My showers are always quick, just enough to get rid of the smell of sweat.

I had been doing these things since the day that Zechs had beat me up for turning down his sister. So I don't really have any excuse for what happened that day beyond that I was too busy worrying about my damned cat that I was on autopilot when I walked into the boy's shower room after gym class. I was thinking about what I would do if she were sick as I showered and what kinds of shots she might need as I dried myself off.

It finally dawned on me that I hadn't checked to see if anyone else was in the showers with me when I was pulling my jeans on and toweling my hair dry. By then, it was way too late. I felt Zechs behind me, almost by instinct, this large, hulking presence like a tiger. Before I could even start to consider the best way to get out of there, he had me cornered, slamming his hands against the lockers that I was standing near on either side of my body. The feeling of his body shoving me up against the lockers was sickening. I felt vulnerable without my shirt on, but I was just glad that I wasn't naked.

"Well, well," Zechs sneered, "aren't we looking pretty today? What do you think, Yuy? Doesn't he look even prettier than a girl like this? I can't figure it out."

I glanced behind him and saw that Heero Yuy was indeed standing there, along with Mueller, Trant, and Alex, all of my least favorite people, along with a few other boys in our class. I felt myself flush darkly seeing Heero there, studying me with this expressionless look as Zechs grabbed my arm and shoved me again, pinning me against the cold metal. I hated Yuy so much right then and I couldn't figure out why. He wasn't the one trapping me, but when he started to smirk, I wanted to fucking disembowel him. I felt so embarrassed and ashamed by him looking at me. I wanted to stab those perfect, pretty blue eyes of his right out of his skull.

"Must be the hair," he sneered at me, bringing my attention back to the fact that I hadn't had the chance to put my hair back into my braid yet.

To my horror, Zechs ran his fingers through my wet hair, gathering a hank of it in his hand and smelling it. I wanted to throw up. I thought of my father touching my hair that one time and had this intense urge to wash it all over again, just to get the feeling of Zechs touching it out of it.

"You know," he jeered, "I think you're right. A boy having hair this pretty, even a faggot, just isn't fair to the girls, now is it, Maxwell?"

I wanted to tell him that if my braid made me a faggot, made me like a girl, then what did his own long hair make him? I wanted to go tell him to fuck himself, but before I could even try to put a stop to my temper, he was twisting my hair in my hands and slamming my head into the locker.

"I think we should do a public service," he said cruelly, "It's only too bad we can't invite the rest of the school to see it. We could call it 'de-maning the fairy' or something like that."

I heard Heero laugh at that, even though I sure as hell didn't find it funny. I glared at him and felt this horrible rage swell in me. What the hell was wrong with me? Why did his laughter make me madder than Zechs' harassment did? Alex met Zechs' eyes and some unspoken communication passed between them. Alex stepped forward and dug a pair of scissors out of his pocket, handing them to his ring leader. My heart dropped into my stomach as I realized that they had planned this all along. Zechs was going to cut my hair off. I found myself glancing at Heero, but to my surprise, he wasn't smirking anymore. It had just melted away and he looked a bit pale. I guess he hadn't been in on Zechs's real intentions. I hoped he got an eye full. I hoped he saw just who it was he was getting in with and I hoped it made him sick.

"Get off of me, you sick fuck!" I snarled at Zechs, twisting to hit him as he let go of my arm to take the scissors from Alex, but he just pinned my leg with his knee and gave me another harsh shove.

"Relax," he grinned and twisted my hair harder, "I'll try to get it as straight as I can. Although, I've never done this before, so no complaints, ok?"

I thrashed against him, but it was useless, I couldn't get the leverage to punch him. I thought of Trowa just then, how he had hated my hair, how he had almost got me to cut it and I felt this sick little feeling in my gut. What was he doing right then, I wondered, did he even miss me? Did he regret anything like I did?

"You know, on second thought," Zechs paused, "Yuy, since you're new here, why don't you do the honors?"

I looked past Zechs and saw Heero standing there as his girlfriend's brother offered him the scissors. I saw him hesitate and look lost, like he was waiting for someone to tell him what to do. But when he reached out and took those scissors, my rage became a tidal wave. He didn't have to do it. He could have said no and walked away, but he hadn't. He was just like everyone else in Zechs and Relena's group, clamoring for praise like some fucking mutt. He didn't even know me. I had done nothing to him, but it didn't matter. He would hurt me for a pat on the head.

Anger turning my guts into red-hot lead, I twisted my head around and savagely sunk my teeth into Zechs's arm, disappointed that I couldn't reach up to the hand holding my hair so I could take some fingers off, and biting him so hard that I drew blood. I was rewarded for my efforts and the gross taste of his blood in my mouth with a sharp yelp of pain and the feeling of his hand releasing me. I didn't waste any time, shoving into Zechs hard enough to make him step back into the bench behind him and making him fall over it.

My body was moving faster than my brain could catch up, which was a fortunate thing under the circumstances. I vaulted over the bench in my way, grabbing my backpack and shirt, shrugging it on as I went and ran at Heero. I felt Mueller make a grab for me as Zechs screamed slurs at me and scrambled to his feet, but I was too fast. I felt panic as I saw that Yuy wasn't at all startled at me running at him. He still had the scissors in his hand and for a moment, I thought he might try to cut me with them. That's what Zechs would have done. To my surprise, he moved to the side, letting me run past him and out the door of the shower room.

If dealing with Relena and Zechs had taught me two vital things, then living with my father had taught me one: always plan your escape. When my dad chased me down like Zechs and his fucked up friends were doing now, I knew that sometimes the most obvious exit could be my doom. I had learned, a long time ago, that easy did not equal surety. And I knew, the second I ran out of that locker room, hearing them racing after me, that if I went left to the exit door out of the gym and into the school, I would be fucked. I was faster than them, but not in the labyrinth of hallways and especially not when everyone was crowding in those hallways to leave the school.

I ran right, across the gymnasium, and into the equipment room. I only had one chance. My brain had finally caught up with my instincts and was screaming at me that what I was about to do was about the worst idea I had ever had and I was about to die. Oh well, what did I have to live for anyway? Sheer luck gave me a clear path to get close to that very same window that Trowa had escaped out of... oh fuck, it felt like years ago.

I had no hope of scaling up to that window, I wasn't tall enough, but I wasn't planning on climbing from the ground floor. I lunged with every ounce of strength that my legs had once I ran past the various cages of balls. I think it was at that point that I was the most frightened, not that I was trapping myself in that small room, but that I was going to miss and break a damned leg. Luck was on my side, or maybe just a decent aim, and my feet found the pommel horse. I used it to increase my momentum and in a move that I was sure made me look like a suicidal squirrel or a parkour enthusiast, I leapt for the window ledge.

That I didn't break my arm was a miracle, but my hands grabbed the ledge instead of slamming into the wall or the window and I pulled myself up. I could hear Zechs and his friends on my heels, swearing and screaming at me. Zechs was the one that I was worried about. He was the only one tall enough to reach me right then, but I still had seconds ahead of him. I slammed my shoulders into the window over and over, pulling a few muscles in the process, but the old, stubborn thing budged for me and I got it open enough to scramble under it.

I felt a shot of triumph as I felt grass on my hands and sunlight on my face, knowing that I was as good as free at that point. Zechs could climb up after me and one of his dumb friends could try the same thing that I did, or just stack something under the window to climb on, but not a single one of them would be able to get out like my scrawny ass had. Sometimes being skinny is a good thing. They would waste precious time getting the widow open wider. I would be long gone by then.

I was positive that they wouldn't keep chase, but I didn't stop running until I reached my side of town. My heart was hammering in my chest at that point and I felt so on edge that my skin was prickling. I came to a stop in front of convenience store and didn't even realize that I was laughing a bit crazily until an elderly man gave me a weird look and I promptly stopped. I walked the rest of the way to my street at a sedate pace, trying to get my heart rate and adrenaline back down, and only stopping for a couple of minutes to braid my hair, feeling incredibly self-conscious at the amount of people that had seen me with it down. I felt worn out and debated digging into my reserves of cash for something to drink with lots of caffeine, but I decided to just hope that some energy would come back to me by the time I had to go to my shift at the factory later on.

I didn't really feel all that bothered by what Zechs had nearly done to me now that it was all over with and I had escaped him. I guess that seems strange, I mean, he had almost cut my hair off as a joke. He had caressed my hair, and that had unsettled me, but was it really any worse than him pulling my pants down in the seventh grade to check my underwear? I didn't expect anything different from him, and while the feeling of his fingers in my loose hair had been creepy, it was nothing compared to how my father had made me feel doing the same thing.

If there was anything at all that bothered me about that little encounter, it was Heero's part in it. That I hated him more than Zechs didn't make any sense, but I couldn't deny the loathing that I felt for the boy. I would like to say that it was just because of the fact that he was Relena's boyfriend, but there was something else about him that offended me on some personal level. If he had just taken those scissors from Zechs, I would have been fine with that hate, but he had hesitated, just like before. And he could have stopped me from fleeing pretty easily, but he had let me go. I couldn't understand him. He bewildered me and I didn't like that feeling.

I pushed Yuy out of my mind as thoroughly as possible as I knocked on Mrs. Liddle's door. He was just an asshole, like the rest of them, nothing more. Just another wannabe kid, latching himself to the Parkers to rise up through our twisted, social hierarchy. Maybe he had never helped bully anyone before, but he obviously didn't have that much of a problem with it. He would get used to it and become a major thorn in my side, just like every other piece of shit that I went to school with. I wouldn't put in any hope that he would give me a free pass again and just felt grateful that he had obviously chickened out in trying to restrain me. It wasn't like he had done it out of the goodness of his heart. There hadn't been sympathy in those deep, blue eyes as I had rushed him, just nervousness and fear.

Mrs. Liddle was wearing a worn apron when she opened the door. It had little strawberries on it. For some reason, the sight of those tiny, cartoonishly depicted pieces of fruit almost had me burst out in hysterical laughter again. Maybe I was going nuts.

"Oh, great timing! The cookies just came out of the oven," she said with a bright smile and opened the door wide for me.

I stared at her in confusion for a moment, my frazzled brain unable to connect my arrival and cookies in any way that made sense, but I obediently walked into her home. Sure enough, I could smell the heavenly aroma of baking cookies coming from her kitchen and I followed her in there, closing the door behind me without being prompted.

There were a couple trays of what looked like chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies cooling on top of the stove. The smell of them hit me like a slap to the face. My mother, back before she had begun to drink herself to death and had actually made a mediocre effort at being a mother, when I had been no more than a toddler, had made me chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. At least, that's what I remembered. I remembered loving them, but I hadn't had them since.

There was some pleasant memory idling in the back of my head at that smell. It wasn't the same exact smell, obviously having been made by a different person, but it was close. I clawed at that memory, trying to bring it to the surface, but it was stuck there. I must have been too young. It was one of those memories that you think that you can get a hold of, this ghost of a thing that you are sure happened to you when you were really young, but if you actually try to look at it, it vanishes like vapor. It wasn't the first time that I had gotten a glimpse of that memory at the smell of fresh baked cookies, and I had tried my hardest to mimic the cookies that I vaguely remembered my mother making me, but I could never get it right.

Probably because they weren't real. A part of me was always sure that as a child, I had made up that memory, tried to give myself some pleasant remembrance of my mother when there was really nothing there. The only other memories I had of her that didn't involve her ignoring me or screaming at me were the rare times that she had advised me to stay away from my father, and her trying in vain to explain why he hit us. Her baking me cookies seems like a fantasy in comparison. When Mrs. Liddle handed me a plate with a couple of the cookies on it, I was sure that my wide eyed look was especially stupid.

"I hope that these are still your favorite," she said carelessly as she walked to the other door in the kitchen.

"They are," I confessed, mystified.

"There's some milk in the refrigerator," her tone was oddly pleasant, a far cry from how she had treated me the first time I had come over to her home, "Have as many as you want, I'll be right back."

She disappeared out the other door before I could formulate any of the questions that popped into my head into audible words. I stared down at the plate of cookies like they were some mythical beast that I wasn't sure was going to bite my head off or not. How the hell had she known that oatmeal chocolate chip are my favorite cookies? She hadn't even known me for a week! And why make them at all? She didn't know me or care for my family. I just couldn't imagine the cold woman who I had often seen glaring at my house when I took the trash out sometimes as someone who would bake cookies for me.

Unwanted, Trowa slipped into my thoughts. Ever since we had broken up, I had found that happening, memories, dreams, and thoughts of him sneaking into my head during weird moments, when all I wanted to do was pretend like our entire relationship had never happened. Standing in Mrs. Liddle's warm kitchen, I thought about all the things that I had done, and Trowa had gotten me to do, not because I had wanted to do them, but because of how lonely I was. Still am, really. Love might make people do stupid things, but I think loneliness is even more guilty of that. Loneliness had gotten me to let Trowa fuck me, maybe loneliness, desire for some human company, had gotten Mrs. Liddle to try to do something nice for me.

Or maybe she was just bored or was being polite. It really wasn't fair, I thought, to think that we had anything in common. Just because I was miserable because I had no friends and no one who loved me, it didn't mean that my neighbor felt the same way just because all she had for company was cats. Maybe she liked it that way. Maybe I was over thinking things. Maybe she had bumped into my mother at the grocery store years back and heard from her what kind of cookies that I had liked, or she was just nuts and had made a very lucky guess. Maybe she just liked baking things and was happy to finally have someone to bake for.

I took a bite out of one of the cookies and felt this wave of nostalgia come over me. Whether it was real or not, they tasted better than the ones in my memory and I found myself polishing off four of them and a glass of milk as well before Mrs. Liddle came back with Pepper in a cat carrier. I think some part of me had been paranoid about my kitten's absence. It sounds dumb now, but that part of me had been so sure that I would never see her again. It was all a trick, that part had screamed at me. Mrs. Liddle was going to hurt her or something was going to go wrong and it would be all my fault for deciding to keep the cat. I destroy everything that I touch.

But there she was, alive and well in the carrier as Mrs. Liddle placed it on the kitchen table, meowing frantically as she saw me. I guess she hadn't believed that she was going to see me again, either. I hurriedly undid the latch on the carrier and picked her out of it and into my arms like she was a baby in seconds. She let me pet her exposed stomach, chewing on my fingers a little.

"Hey, there, sweetheart," I crooned at her, leaning my head down and to my delight, she met me halfway with a little head butt, rubbing our foreheads together, "I hope you didn't give the nice doctor any trouble."

"None at all," my neighbor assured me, an amused smile on her face as she watched us, "She was a perfect angel. She just missed you a lot. She's quite attached to you."

I felt myself blush for some reason, even though I had already known that. It scared me a little, how happy Pepper was to see me again, and how distraught she had acted when she had realized that I was leaving her with my neighbor. She hadn't known me for that long, but she depended on me and I didn't like that. I didn't like having anyone's life and their happiness in my weak, fumbling hands, but I also couldn't deny that, for whatever reason, she needed me as much as I needed her. Or maybe I just chose to see it that way because I needed someone to need me, even if it was an animal.

"What did the doctor do to her?" I asked

"Tests, mostly," Mrs. Liddle confirmed, a sad tone to her voice, "She must have had a responsible owner in the past, before she ended up a stray. While she did need some vaccinations, she's very healthy for kitten that lived on the street, though that must have not been for long. She doesn't have any diseases or parasites and she was already spayed at some point. She's a bit under nourished, but that will take time. If you keep feeding her regularly, she'll be just fine. I'll give you some wet food to help enrich her diet as well."

"Thank God," I couldn't help sighing in utter relief.

I had been so sure in my pessimism that I was going to lose Pepper. How could I possibly keep her when I had lost everything else that had mattered to me? My father hadn't found her yet, and I hadn't killed her out of negligence, so surely the vet was going to find something wrong with her and need to put her down. I wouldn't even get the chance to say goodbye to her, just like Quatre. I could hardly believe that I had lucked out and she was perfectly healthy, it seemed like a trick to me.

"Thank you so much, for everything," I felt like all of my words were completely inadequate to articulate the amount of gratitude that I actually felt towards my neighbor for everything that she had done.

I nuzzled my kitten and kissed the top of her head, loving her soft little purr that she always gave when I did that.

"Everyone says that you're just like your father," Mrs. Liddle suddenly said.

I looked over at her in shock, expecting to find her glaring at me with such a statement, but she was still smiling at me, almost wistfully.

"But I think that everyone must not know you very well," she said softly, "Maybe you look a bit like him, when he was younger, but you're nothing like him. If anyone, you're just like how Helen was when she was your age, and I don't just mean how you look. She used to love animals, too," she reached over to pet Pepper's ear, ignoring my look of shock.

I didn't know what startled me more, to hear that my mother had loved anything at all, that we had something in common, or had rather, or that Mrs. Liddle had known my mother when she had been a teenager. I guess that shouldn't be so surprising, they had both lived in Nausten probably their entire lives, it made sense that they would bump into each other.

Hearing that my mother had loved animals like I did should have made me happy. It used to make me happy whenever anyone had told me that I looked like how she used to, that we had the same hair and skin and shape of our eyes. But this just made me sad. It was one more thing that I had taken from her. If I had never been born, would she have remained with my father, who refused to have any pets in the house, or would she have left him behind and found someone who treated her better, who loved her and didn't hit her and let her have all the animals that she wanted? Would she have been whole and had other children, children that were better than me, smarter and stronger and nicer and could take care of her? Would she still be happy, still be pretty, and never know what it felt like to sit in her bedroom in the early morning, crying with a broken nose? Would she never know what it was like to be an alcoholic waitress, living with two people that she had never wanted to begin with?

"People like your father..." Mrs. Liddle sounded almost as sad as I did when she spoke again, "Well, people like that happen when there's too much hate and not enough love in their lives. His father was the same way, hating animals as much as he hated people. But you and your mother are different. Hold on to that, Duo, never lose it and you'll never become your father."

She couldn't possibly know how much that one, small statement filled me with both horrible relief and sadness. I felt that desperation that I had felt seldom as a child, but more and more frequently as I had gotten older, the fear that I feel almost daily now, that I never become like my dad. Every time I lash out, whether it's hitting Trowa or Relena or Zechs, or just feeling hateful towards the world for everything bad that's happened to me in my life, I feel that one step closer to becoming what I fear.

It didn't used to be like that. When I was little, I had looked up to my father. Not the parts that made him angry and drink and hit, but the parts of him that would sometimes show that he cared for me, and the parts of him that would let him go into work every single day, even though he would complain about his job all the time, and risk his life. He would come home and tell me about a bad man he had arrested and the people he had saved and I had felt pride in him. At some point in my childhood, I had wanted to grow up to be like that, to help people, to be strong and brave and cool like that.

But as the years went by, those kind of stories dwindled. Instead of coming home, proud of his work, even though he was exhausted from it and sometimes frustrated, my father would only come home with stories of anger and anxiety, talking about the cock sucking coworkers that got promoted for the hard work that he had done, or the perps that had gotten away because of lawyers or some shitty mistake, or getting reprimanded by his chief for breaking some small rule that he found arbitrary while trying to arrest someone. After awhile, he had stopped talking about his day at all and just came home drunk and angry about everything.

There was a part of me that still held on to how he used to be. I'm not saying that he was ever a great father, but he had seemed to try once. Maybe it's just the hazy memory of a child, but I remember him not hitting as much, I remember him being kinder and being more like a father instead of the brute that he is now. Maybe that's just an illusion and he was never like that, but I like to believe that he had been a better father to me at some point.

But now, mostly, I didn't want to be anything like him. That I was quick to anger like him frightened me, but I couldn't seem to stop it. I hated that I felt relief hearing just one person say that I wasn't like my father. It shouldn't be that way, and I felt like I was disrespecting him. But what was there to be proud about when I looked at him now? At either of my parents?

I suddenly couldn't bear to be around Mrs. Liddle anymore. I didn't want to know what my parents had been like before I had come around and destroyed their lives. I didn't want to know how much my neighbor hated my father and I didn't want her hate to justify my own. I bundled Pepper up in my coat so no one would see her when I went back to my house and took the cans of wet food that my neighbor offered to me.

"Thanks again, Mrs. Liddle, I'll come around tomorrow to start on your fence," I told her as I walked out her front door.

"Duo," I heard her call out to me and turned on her front yard to look at her, standing in the front doorway.

She looked so small and pale just then, her expression haggard and drawn, like she had just aged twenty years in the course of a few seconds.

"I'm so sorry," she said, her voice tight with incredible guilt.

I could only stare at her for a moment in bewilderment. What could she possibly have to be sorry about, especially where I was concerned. And that guilt on her face... I knew it wasn't from something small like judging me at first because of my father. Whatever this was... what ever slight she had thought that she had done to me, it haunted her. But before I could ask her why she was sorry, she had closed the door, leaving me standing there, holding my cat and feeling like I had just missed something terribly important.
　

End Part 1
　
- 20
- 21
- 22
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)